GosuGamers sat down with head-admin Nenad “ss-eXtasY” Bjelos of SS-League, currently the best league on eurobattle.net in Europe.
From the early times of DotA, eurobattle.net has been the starting area for most DotA gamers. With the years however Garena has steadily taken over, leaving eurobattle.net a dying platform for DotA leagues and tournaments, but what many don't know is that eurobattle.net has not died yet! For more details about the ranking system, the icons for the top players, the hosting bots, how to get in SS and many other interesting things check the full interview.
Hello Nenad, can you introduce yourself for the readers and tell us a bit about you and about your position in the eurobattle.net staff?
-Well, first I want to say hello to all readers of this article, and to thank GosuGamers for this extraordinary opportunity to say something about the SS Inhouse league. My name is Nenad Bjelos, and I come from Belgrade,
Serbia’s capital. I am 21 years old, and I am currently on my third year of business management studies. It is the profession I always dreamed about, so probably my inspiration for leading the league came from the passion for organization and administration. I am currently the leader and representative of Safelist community. I have passed 3 years long road from a regular member, through helping and moderation until, with the retirement of original leaders, I have become the head-admin. Please describe SS as a community and tell us what makes it special?
-I think that it is very important to note the main idea which we have followed with from the very start. That is being a community on a first place. DotA for it self is just a game as every other, so we believe it is very important to build enjoyable and healthy atmosphere full of friendship and positive energy. We tend to insist on human values, and to put in the first plan all the things we enjoy in the real, everyday life. DotA is a team game, which we play with other people, all with emotions, ambitions, feelings and all the things we're meant of. I personally believe that this is something we should never forget, and that such approach is the only way to fully enjoy the time spent in this game. Exactly that strong feeling of participation and the link between players is what makes us special.
What is the playing system there?
-Well, after all we are a league, which has specific requirements in matter of higher level of DotA understanding. We have two types of games, normal ones and challenges. The first type of game can be started by any player, by specifying the game mode which will be played. After ten players signed for the game, two teams are being formed randomly and the game is hosted, while the two best ranked players in each team are selected as leaders.
The second, much more competitive and standardly used method of playing is challenge. It can be started between two users who belong to the captains group. The captains are highly skilled users who are able to lead and motivate the teammates in the game. After enough users signed in, captains draft the registered players in the 1-2-2-2-2-1 order, and start the game either of CM or CD mode.
Is SS equipped with a ranking system or a ladder page and what other facilities does it present?
-Of course, SS has a highly developed, and fully automatized ranking system. In the very moment a game finishes, all the stats are being uploaded to the database and the ladder site. The points gained are strictly based on teams strenght ratio, so in case you play in weaker team you would a higher amount of points and vice verca. Also, we have our own Ventrilo server which is fully reliable.
What I would like to note is that we have a very unique way to reward our top players. That would be a set of 12 server DotA icons, which are automatically granted based on a scheme for the total of top 30 players of the community. Its something what will represent your achievement in any moment of your being on the server. The icons represent DotA heroes like: Potm, Earth Shaker, Naix, Invoker etc.
What about the lag? People are complaining about the lag and say this is the reason they don’t play on eurobattle.net.
-I am proud to say that we made great developements about mentioned problems in the recent period. We are equipped with hosting programs for maximum delay and lag optimization which provides pings around 30ms between all Europe players. In order to increase the performance even further, all the games are played on official SS hosts which are placed on 100 mb/s servers.
I am free to say that lag and delay problems are part of the long past now ;).
Are there any known players in SS?
-Since SS has a quite long and rich history, it was a starting place for many known players you may heard of. Some of them are:
eXodus - DotA invite administrator 
Tayschrenn - clan PGS member and DotA invite voucher
MiniTito - former SK Gaming member, CRO nations leader
Freezer - ex Fnatic member, now TeG member
Memmon - NIHL administrator
Azen - currently member of EG Heldarion - various dota achievements for SS, Garena and DotaAllStarsAlso, the great majority of our regular members are part of famous Dota Invite community as well. I will mention some of most active ones as Darky, Kenyshor, Tay, 73rror, Sublime, Killer, Swiftending etc.
What does one need to do to become a member of the league and what are the skill requirements?
-SS league is a place for rather high skilled DotA players, with remarkable DotA knowledge and experience.
I believe its important to note that beside DotA related skills we expect our members to be mannered, mature and friendly, so therefore we give quite big importance to safelist requests where we tend to find something more about our candidates. Of course that this is one of very important criteria about judging players in the test period. That is something what we must do, followed by our idea of a real community, which has to insist on inter-social values as well.
As it is mentioned above, our league is placed at a private eurobattle.net server. All the info about connecting to it, may be found -here.
In order to join our league you will have to past a way from safelist request throught a test period toward a full membership. You may find further instructions about it at our league forum - here.
Are there any special tournaments besides the normal league thing?
-SS has already organized three 5v5 tournaments with widely accepted rules in DotA community, leaded with experienced moderation team and strong technical support as high speed hosting, streaming, Ventrilo server, tournaments web and various awards for best players. At this very moment we're running a signing up for a 1v1 tournament, after which we plan to make another 5v5 happening.
Thank you for the interview. GosuGamers wishes you, and whole SS community,the best of luck. Do you have any shoutouts?
The main shoutout would be my warm invitation to try out our league, find your place in our community and become a part of our big family :)
I wish to use opportunity to greet all safelist players whom without we would not be what we are, and to thank my moderators team, technical staff and all other great people who made a contribution to SS.
In the name of safelist community I thank GosuGamer's and your interviewer Raptor7 for this opportunity to represent SS which made me, and all it's members, very honored.
Thank you for reading, and my best regards! Cya in SS ;)
So, if you guys are interested in joining SS Inhouse League, we encourage you to make an application on the given links.
LINKS
Info about SS Inhouse League: here.
Info about how to connect to eurobattle.net: here
